


He Deserved This

by sabriel82



Series: As Long As You Try [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Graphic depictions of scratching as self-harm, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Matt Murdock Needs a Hug, Matt Murdock's Ninja Powers, Not as angsty as the title suggests?, Self-Harm, Some Fuckbois say some shit, The 'btw I have ultra senses came out in college' AU no one asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-22
Packaged: 2018-09-01 08:01:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8616034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabriel82/pseuds/sabriel82
Summary: Prequel to As Long As You Try. Can be read as a stand alone.





	1. Matt Murdock Fucks Some Shit Up

**Author's Note:**

> I'm separating this into three chapters so you can skip the self-harm bits if you need. That's all Chapter Two is. There is a little hint of it at the end of this chapter, and there's some fat and homophobic language at the beginning of this chapter. Stay Safe, hons!

“Hey Batboy!” 

he was pelted in the back of the head with a crushed beer can. He sighed, ignored Foggy's quiet “Just leave it. We can go file a report” and turned around, hand leaving Foggy's elbow. 

He leaned on his cane for a second, analyzing the situation. Five guys, two directly in front of him, one about ten feet back and to the left of the leftmost guy, one in a tree and the last on the steps of the frat house. He could take them no problem. 

Well, Foggy was there and that was kind of a problem. “You deaf too?! I said take your fat faggot boyfriend and get the fuck out of here!” oh no. He might've let the bat boy comment slide, might've ignored the beer can, but nobody talked shit about Foggy and got away with it if he was there. 

“Matt, C'mon, let's just leave these neanderthals and let them get back to their circle jerk in peace.” Foggy wheedled, his please don't do the stupid thing please voice bleeding over his regular one, and Matt almost stopped. Almost. 

“What the fuck did you just say, tubby?” guy in front number 2 snarled and Matt sighed again. Great. He was about to kick serious ass and then Foggy was gonna leave because he kicked serious ass. He dropped his cane and cracked his knuckles even as the first three ran at them.

”Listen here, you pieces of shit,” Guy in front number one reached them first, and for all that he smelled like protein powder and gym disinfectant, he went down with one punch to his jaw. “It's been a long fucking week for those of us who have to actually,” Matt ducked under the swing from Guy in front two and stood behind his arm and torso,kicking his leg out and making his knee buckle,”work to stay in school because we don't have daddy's money” smirked when his face hit the pavement with a dull crack. He was already in motion by the time guy number three came up on him.”so as glad as I am for the,” He stopped in front of Matt and squared off with him. Matt rolled his eyes “stress relief” and went for his face, feinting at the last second and landing a punch straight to his unguarded gut.” if you could shut your mouths” He went down with a pained groan, face falling against guy number one's leg. “And find something better to do than pelt me” Tree guy and steps guy hopped from their roosts “with beer cans” in near synchronization and Matt briefly wondered when his life had become a level of street fighter. “Or at least come up with some better insults”   
They were a little bit more coordinated in their attack and one managed to land a good punch to his right eye, snapping the frame of his glasses and making the lens cut into the tender skin just outside his eye. He had him down with one well placed kick that didn't require any extra training, and the last guy tried to back away only to trip over guy number 3 and fall on his ass, still scrambling backwards. “That would be much appreciated.” He tucked the broken frames of his glasses in his jeans pocket with a sigh and turned back to Foggy, scooping up his cane.

“You're gonna regret this!”

“Regret what?”

“Chad's dad knows the Dean, and he's gonna get you expelled!”

“For what?” Matt smiled, the picture of innocence if not for the cuts on his knuckles.

“For beating us up!”

“Me? I didn't see anyone get beat up, and certainly not by me” it wasn't a lie, entirely, and he knew they'd be too proud to actually admit the Blind law student had beaten them one on five. “Come on, Foggy. I've never seen such shitfaced drunk people in my life” he hadn't actually seen anything, to be fair.

Foggy made it all the way back to the dorm room without losing his shit, but Matt could tell it was a close thing “Foggy, I-” he started, legs curling up beneath him on the bed

“What could you possibly have to say, Matthew?” Foggy barked, standing over Matt's bed “Are you even blind?!” 

“What?! Yes! Please just let me explain!”

“Better get to it then. You got five minutes before I walk out that door.” Foggy pulled his spare bag from under his bed and started shoving clothes into it. Matt gaped.“Clock's ticking. Four minutes forty five seconds.”

“When I was little and I got those chemicals spilled in my eyes, it heightened all of my other senses. I didn't know how to handle it for the first few years, and then when I was at St.Agnes a man showed up, blind, like me. He taught me how to use my senses, taught me how to fight. I can't see you, foggy, I swear I would never lie to you about that. It's hard to explain..”

“You still got three minutes thirty seconds, make it not hard” Foggy bit out, dashing into the little bathroom to grab his toiletry kit. Matt flailed for words. How do you explain the way you've been interacting with the world for the greater part of your life? 

“It's like… an impressionistic painting. I can't ‘see' anything. But I can hear how the air moves around you and the room, I can hear your hair shifting against your clothes, I can… hear your heartbeat. I can smell what you ate for breakfast yesterday, the individual parts of your laundry detergent, your soap, everything. And it all comes together in my head somehow and makes an image of everything around me that I can ‘see'. In my head. It's like everything is on fire, how it ripples and shifts from one second to another.” Matt scrabbled for words to explain, and none seemed to fit exactly. “Foggy, please I'm sorry I didn't tell you but when was I supposed to? You were the first person that had ever taken the time to get to know me for me, and we went from strangers to friends to...whatever we are now so quickly, I didn't know how to bring it up!” Matt pulled the crumpled mess of his glasses out of his pocket and tried to straighten them out, (hands shaking, tears filling his eyes) just for something to do while Foggy judged their fate. 

“I need some space.” Foggy shouldered his clothes bag and school bag, voice flat. 

“Foggy, please!” Matt sobbed, and dug his nails into the back of his opposite hand, cutting off the tears before they could start, feeling blood seep under his nails. He realized that he had nothing to say to make this okay.He hung his head, and continued in a dead voice “I'll get the transfer paperwork tomorrow, I understand. I can give it to Marci to pass along to you if you don't want to see me again.” 

Foggy's heart broke to see Matt hurting himself but it couldn't cut completely through his anger. He just needed some space to calm down. “Matt, you don't need to get transfer paperwork. I'm coming back, I just need some time to go lick my wounds. You lied to me, Matt. Every day, for two years. I'm hurt, and I need some time for myself, but I will be back, and we can talk more then.” he turned his back on his.. Whatever they were and walked out of the dorm, dialing Marci as he left the building “Hey, can I crash at your place tonight?”


	2. Matt Murdock Doesn't Handle Things Well

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF SELF HARM AND SELF DEPRECATING THOUGHT SPIRALS INSIDE. PLEASE DO NOT READ IF THIS IS TRIGGER OR SQUICK-ING FOR YOU. STAY SAFE Y'ALL.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See summary. Also, Things get way better for Matty after this I promise. There will be the peomised fluff.

Matt listened to Foggy leave the building, listened to foggy bitch about him to Marci on the phone, listened until Foggy had walked out of his range of hearing before he curled into a ball on his side, sobbing.

His hand was still bleeding from where he'd dug his nails into it and he scratched long furrows into the underside of his forearms, feeling the skin break and split under his nails. He deserved this. 

This and so much more. He laid in bed, sobbing and scratching mark after mark after mark into his arms until there was no skin left that didn't burn every time he moved.  
He deserved this.

He had chased Foggy, the one good thing in his life, away and it was all because he was a freak. _Fucking useless_ , a voice that sounded suspiciously like stick hissed from the back of his mind _what a waste of space. You had one job and you couldn't even handle that._ Don't let Foggy get hurt. His one job, and it ended up being him that did it. 

He rolled out of bed during a break between crying bouts and climbed into the shower, turning the heat on as high as it would go, sitting in the bottom of the stall and crying some more, scratches burning and stinging under the heat. He felt the blood rush to the surface of his skin, felt the water scald his shoulders until he couldn't feel anything but numb in them.  
He deserved this.  
He stayed in the shower until the water ran cold and he was numb all over, and after he turned the water off he sat in the bottom of the stall until his hair was only slightly damp, out of tears.

When he finally dragged himself out of the shower, he dressed in his scratchiest pair of pajamas and lay down on the floor between their beds, carpet digging marks into his cheek and thigh. He scratched at his arms some more, uncaring of the blood on his hands. His stomach growled and he ignored it.   
He deserved this.   
He fell asleep on the floor between their beds and had a panic attack when he was alone after waking up from a nightmare. Foggy was gone. He was gone gone _gone **gonegonegone**_. He must have fallen asleep again at some point because the next time he woke up, his alarm was screeching at him to get a move on. He silenced it and wriggled under his bed, hoping to just spontaneously stop existing. He didn't go to class. He deserved this.


	3. Matt Murdock Gets His Hugs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fluff! There's a bit about Matt's wounds being cleaned, and blood, but other than that it's all hugs and talking.

Foggy had gone to Marci's and cried to her as best as he could without telling her what really happened. He was mad, not out to sabotage his..whatever they were. She listened for about an hour, then handed him a bottle of Jack and dug out their assignments, alternating between force feeding him answers and booze.  
They got way more drunk than they should've for a Tuesday. Foggy slept on her couch, and woke to his alarm blaring at him and his head pounding. He got dressed and took probably more advil than he should've, and even accepted Marci's offer of a cotton candy frapp on their way to class, whatever that was. He sat through his first class no problem, but with a rising feeling of wrongness in his gut as he walked to his second one. When he got there, he knew why. Matt wasn't anywhere in the room. He also wasn't anywhere for their last class of the day and by the time that was over, Foggy had enough pent up worry that he ran back to their dorm. 

Breathless and scared out of his mind at what he'd find, Foggy opened the door slowly. Matt wasn't there where was Matt ohmygod he started to panic, then saw the foot sticking out from under the bed. He shut the door and dropped his bags to the desk, noticing the drops of..Blood!? On Matt's blanket when he put his hand against it to kneel down.

“Matt, will you come out from under the bed please?” he asked in the most even, calming tone he could manage at the moment. There was a thump, he figured he'd startled Matt awake, and slowly, oh so slowly, Matt inched his way out from under the bed and knelt in front of him, head hung. His face was red on one side, and he had a massive black eye, but that wasn't even what caught Foggy's eyes. It was his arms. They were covered in long pink scratches and scabs and had dried blood caked over them. So did his hands. There was blood caked in the grooves of his fingernails and Foggy's heart shattered. 

“ oh,Matty. I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have left last night.” had he really been so upset that he saw Matt hurt himself and still walked out? Yes. He had, and he regretted every second of it. This wasn't worth it. he pulled Matt into a crushing hug and felt tears running down his cheeks. “Matt, I'm so sorry that I just left like that last night, I saw you claw at your hand and I didn't even stop to think about what it meant, I was so upset, but it wasn't worth this. Please tell me you know that?” Foggy pulled back from Matt who was still not answering and that one look answered for him. “Matt, acknowledge me please? I want to talk to you, and I can't if I don't know if you're actually absorbing any of this” He pleaded.

Matt turned to face Foggy and raised his head just a little. “ ‘m listening” he mumbled, throat sore from all the crying he'd done last night. 

“Good. First things first, I'm not upset with you for having ninja powers, I'm upset that you took so long to tell me about aforementioned ninja powers, make sense?”

“They're not ninja powers, Fogs”

“ It's a plausible conjecture. Moving on! Point numero dos: I'm not leaving you. I was upset and needed some time to myself and I fully intended on coming back here after class today, which I did. Everything crystal clear there? You're stuck with me and it's gonna take more than ninja powers to run me off” foggy brushed some hair out of Matt's face while he watched that one settle in. Matt nodded. “That works for now. Onto the final point.” he grabbed Matt's hand lightly in his own and stretched his arm lightly between them “this? This is not okay. I get that you didn't feel like you had any options last night, but for future reference, when you feel like you need to do this, come to me. We'll work it out together. Kay? Doesn't matter if it's the middle of the night and it's because you had a bad dream and needed to ground yourself, or if we're somewhere with a bunch of people and it's too much, I'd rather lose twenty minutes sleep than have you hurt yourself. Please.” 

Matt nodded again, eyes pricking up. “ I'm sorry. I'm so sorry” he threw his arms around Foggy and buried his face in his shoulder, a new round of tears falling down his face.

Foggy wrapped his arms around Matt and rocked a little, stroking his hair “it's okay, I'm not mad anymore, I get it, it's okay, shhh, breathe, we're okay” he kept up the litany until Matt had cried himself out on his shoulder “why don't we go clean up your arms, okay?” Matt nodded into his shoulder but made no effort to move.

“C'mon, you gotta stand up so we can go to the bathroom, and then we'll put on comfortable clothes and order that pizza we were gonna get yesterday, kay?” he rubbed his hand in a few circles on Matt's back before standing up, Matt going with him and following him into the bathroom. 

Foggy dug their surprisingly well stocked first aid kit out of the bottom of one of his drawers and brought it back to the bathroom where Matt was waiting, sitting on the toilet lid, arms held out away from him and straight out. 

“You can relax, I'm just gonna wipe away the blood and stuff with some water first.” he gently pushed his arms back down to his lap and ran warm water over a washcloth. He grabbed Matt's right arm, wiped the same patch of skin three times before rinsing the cloth and moving to the next bit over, repeating until both arms were clean and they didn't look nearly as bad when they didn't look like stunt arms from _Carrie._

“Alright, they don't look that bad but we're gonna wash them out with peroxide because there's all sorts of gross stuff under fingernails. This shouldn't hurt, but it'll probably fizz a whole lot and i'm gonna do it twice on each arm” he rinsed the right, then the left, right,left and wiped Matt's arms down with the warm water again just for good measure. He capped the peroxide and pulled out two rolls of gauze, wondering who had given them this first aid kit.   
“Okay, last step is gauze and this only has to stay on until it scabs over, just to be on the safe side, mkay?” he pressed a kiss to Matt's forehead and grabbed one arm, wrapping the gauze first around his thumb and palm once to get it to stay, then moving down his arm before tucking the tail in on itself. He did the same for the other arm and stood up. “I probably should've put medical tape but it's the _actual worst_ and leaves your skin sticky for days which is no fun. C'mon, let's go pajama.” he took Matt very lightly by the hand and led him back to the main part of the room, turnings to his dresser and pulling out a pair of pajamas for himself and an old sweater for matt after a moment's hesitation. 

“You wanna wear this? It's that fuzzy sweater you like to steal so much” he quickly changed and turned around to hand to face Matt with the shirt held in one hand.

He was in his pajama pants and giving the approximate location of the sweater a longing look and Foggy snorted “I offered to let you wear it, you dork, no need to look at it like you'll never touch it again, here.” he thrust the sweater across the space between them with a smile. Matt took it and immediately put it on, with a small smile. 

It was a little goofy, honestly. It hung off one of his shoulders and down to his mid thigh, but it was his favorite thing of foggy's to wear because he'd gotten it second hand so it was already well worn. “Thank you” Matt said, hugging Foggy. 

“It's no problem” Foggy assured and dialed the Pizza place, collapsing into his bed and patting the space right next to himself “C'mere?”

Matt's small smile widened a bit and he crawled in to settle himself between Foggy's chest and his arm. He nestled in as close as he could, head resting on Foggy's shoulder and listened to him order the pizza “yeah that's right. Half meat lovers and half” deep sigh “pepperoni and pineapple. Yes I know it's one of the cardinal food sins but I can't convince him, so whatever he can have his pizza sin” 

Matt rolled his eyes and poked foggy in the chest “There's nothing that says pineapple on pizza is a sin, don't you think you're going a bit far?” 

“No, Matty, there absolutely is and they just didn't show you because they didn't want to break your spirits completely” Foggy retorted, hand rubbing lazy circles along Matt's back while he gave the address. Matt snorted and closed his eyes, content for the first time since the fight.

“..you fallin' asleep on me?” Foggy chuckled, hand coming up to card through Matt's hair.

“Mm-hmm” Matt sighed, less than half awake. He curled tighter into Foggy, an arm and leg thrown over him.

“Yeah, Okay, I'll wake you up when the food gets here, you Octopus” Foggy continued carding his hand through Matt's hair, only stopping when he was sure he was asleep. He took this time to really look him over and process things. He looked slightly better than death warmed over, but not by much. He had a different way of processing his surroundings. He had dark red hair. He had ninja powers. He was blind. Yeah, it was weird as fuck, but foggy could deal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. I've been trying to post this all day, so I'm sorry it didn't all go up at once.


End file.
